What is Carbon neutrality

What does it mean when someone goes carbon neutral?

It means the person emits no net carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The principle is similar to a balanced budget. If you must spend X dollars, to keep your head above water you better make sure you recover that X dollars somewhere.

With this simple idea, if you're able to calulate the amount of carbon you produce from your lifestyle in a year, you can make up for what you used (called an offset) by doing a number of things.

The simplest is tree planting. A tree can soak up a ton of Co2 in its lifetime. Another way is to contribute money to energy conservation projects or to those that generate energy from renewable sources.

Lets do a quick example. Lets say using a carbon footprint calculator (one example here) I learn that I produce 10 tons of Co2 a year. I have 2 choices,

a) sponsor the planting of 10 trees to absorb that much Co2, or

b) donate money to a hospital for them to install energy devices like solar water heaters to prevent electricity usage that would have otherwise produced 10 tons of Co2.

Its not an exact science and hospitals in apathetic countries will laugh you out the door but you get the idea.

In countries that do take their carbon neutrality seriously, businesses are already offering people a way to live carbon neutral lives by offering "carbon credits" for sale. See examples here and here to understand how they work.

The main point is that if you must pollute, you should do something to allow that amount of pollution to be absorbed or better yet, prevent its production somewhere on this planet. If everybody does this, then in theory we will have a 'balanced carbon account' i.e. no net gain of Co2 produced by human activity.

Read this, this and this to get a better understanding of carbon neutrality.